Building Virtual Words
2023.9-12
Role
3D Artist
Time Frame
2 weeks for each game
Platform
Quest 2 / Motion Chair
Interested?
Contact me
Building Virtual Worlds (BVW) challenges students to work quickly, creatively and collaboratively. Part of the immersion semester, BVW gives small teams of students two weeks to create a virtual world, with new groups and goals for each round. A typical team consists of two artists, two programmers and one producer/sound designer. Student are encourged to try out different devices such as quest, 3d rudder and motion chair. It all culminates in a public festival to hundreds of spectators – and an incredible sense of accomplishment. This page shows two of the games: Mamma Mia! and Horror Ride.
Background
Prompt: The Guest Helps a Character Who is Afraid
Create a highly interactive VR world for the Quest 2: a world in which the guest or guests (remember, we have “guests,” not “users”) must help another character achieve a goal. The character is frightened or intimidated by some challenge, some situation, some thing, or some other character that stands in the way of achieving that goal.
My roles and responsibilities
As an artist, I collocorated closely with designers and programmers to brainstorm the theme and concept of the game. I created moodboard for the game art style. Additionally, I created the water shader, the skybox and the pizza island. I also design simple UI elements for the title and the the dialogue bubble.
The Game
Mamma Mia!
This one-player interaction using Quest 2 , asking the much-debated question, should pineapple be on pizza？The locals on the Italian Pizza Island afraids of the pineapple pirate. Guest plays as a pepperoni defender who protected his Italian Pizza Island from the invading pineapple pirate. Enjoy!
Room Design for festival
Reflections
Learning things quickly and get hands on
Teamwork
This is the first time I ever used Maya as an artist, and also the first time I designed a game as part of a team. I learnt the whole pipeline and also new softwares such as Maya, Substance 3D painter and Unity quickly both by myself and also from my teammates and get hands on experience in a short time.
Another important thing I learnt is how to face challenges and solve it together as a team. For example, our team receives a lots of feedbacks and possible directions to adapt the game after interim presentation. We sat down as a team and work on the list of questions. We each said which question we think is more important and finally divided the tasks according to the roles and came to an agreement of a to-do list for the coming week. As a team, we always help each other and trying to make other’s life easier. For example, I was struggling with version control in Unity and I asked help for the programmers in the team. After I learnt it, I also asked about the file names format they preferred to use because I want to make sure my assests are all named correctly so that it will not any causing confusion when they merge my scene into the game scene. Overall, I think we as a team did a very good job, and it is proven as we are the only team in Round 1 which eventually get selected to the public festival.
Background
Prompt: Game for the festival
Create a highly interactive world using any device, it can be a party game, a social experience, and emmisive experience. Think in terms of the emotions, the player numbers, the time frame and etc.
My roles and responsibilities
During this round, we have a relatively large scene.
The Game
Horror Ride
This one-player emmersive experience using Motion Chair, inviting the players to join an advanture to explore the scret of the wield house.
‘When I wake up, I am tied on a wheelchair. Why I am in this house? What are the horrible noises from the basement? What is happening in the lost building?’
